Move folders and all of their content to another folder in Visual Basic .NET

Maker Data Matrix in Visual Basic .NET Move folders and all of their content to another folder

Figure 8.6 Use the folder properties to perform various management tasks, including renaming, deleting, and moving the folder.

To perform these folder tasks, you would access the folder or resource properties and initiate the appropriate action from there. For example, figure 8.6 shows the Properties page of the AWReporter folder that contains our sample reports. Use the folder s Properties page to perform various management tasks. For example, to delete the folder, click the Delete button. For some reason, copying folders and resources is not supported. You could upload the files manually as a workaround. Uploading resources Once you ve established the folder structure, you can upload report content manually using the Upload File link (see figure 8.2). As we mentioned in chapter 2, if the report author has the appropriate security permissions, the Report Designer will create the project folder straight from the VS .NET IDE when the project is deployed. As a part of the deployment process, the Report Designer links the project folder to the root (Home) folder and names it according to the TargetFolder setting you specified on the project s properties. The Report Designer doesn t allow you to create additional folders below the root project folder. However, the Report Manager doesn t expose this restriction. You can create as many nested folders as you like. 270

There are two common situations when uploading files manually may be necessary: when the report author doesn t have the rights to upload the reports directly from the Report Designer and when the report definition file is authored by an outside party. What resources can be uploaded to a folder The Report Server doesn t enforce special rules and allows any file to be uploaded to the report catalog. However, it only makes sense to upload the following resources: Report definition (*.RDL) files Shared data source (*.RDS) files Image files XSL transformation files (*.XSL) HTML pages

But wait, you might ask, what if the report needs other types of files, for example, an XML file from which to read some settings Should you upload it to the Report Server catalog so you don t have to specify the absolute or relative file path when you need to load it in XML DOM using custom code The answer is, unfortunately, no. Just like any other resource, the file gets serialized and saved to the Report Server database, so it is not physically present in the Report Server virtual root or elsewhere on the file system. For this reason, it makes sense to upload only external resources that Reporting Services supports, which currently include images, XSLT files, and HTML pages. For example, for the purposes of the AWReporter sample reports, besides the report definition files and the shared data source files, you need to upload to the report catalog the awc.jpg logo image file and the confidential.jpg image file, as well as the SalesPromotion.xsl file that we used to fine-tune the XML output of the Sales Promotion report in chapter 6. Uploading HTML pages could be useful for reports with navigational features. For example, you may have a report with hyperlinks that display context-sensitive help for different sections of the report. You can put the help content in HTML pages and upload them with the report. By the way, the file size limit for external files is 4 MB. The 4-MB limit is a browser upload control limitation. You can post larger resources through the SOAP management API. Managing folders How should you partition the folder structure so it is well organized and yet simple to maintain Our advice is to keep it as flat as possible. The advantages of having a flat physical structure are twofold: